We have left Italy.. Trying to speak French will be the new challenge.

The hotel Les Bords de Mer is next to a popular beach where people were exercising and swimming soon after the sun rose.

Great view from our room in the daylight.

We took a taxi to Parc Longchamps, where the Musée des Beaux Arts is located, and it turns out, a museum of natural history, a zoo, and various gardens.

Extensive water feature at the entryway:

The art museum is over two floors but not very big. It covers European painting, primarily French, from the 16-19th centuries.

A lot of French Caravaggisti paintings.

A Reubens

The collection of Honore Daumier busts of French politicians was amusing.

He obviously did not think well of them.

A painter I had not seen before, Felix Ziem, must have looked at JWM Turner paintings.

The Parc Longchamps is located uphill. We decided to walk back downhill.

We stopped for lunch where our salads of octopus and calamari was not what we were expecting.

Part of the walk was through some rough looking streets with people sleeping on the sidewalk. We eventually reached the Vieux Port.

The temperature was about 20 celsius and in the sun, it was hot. Some views across the port.

Walked past The Citadel Fort Saint Nicolas.

Le Plage Catalan, the beach next to our hotel.

I went up to the infinity pool, which was too cold to use but did some sketching of the views behind the hotel.

The road, Corniche President John Fitzgerald Kennedy goes right past the hotel.

Our room looks onto Îles du Fioul, three islands. One island holds Chateau d’If, used as a prison from 1640-1914. Dumas used the prison as a setting in Count of Monte Cristo.

We walked to dinner past this porte which looks towards Chateau d’If.

For a change of pace we dined at Tabi, a Japanese restaurant that uses local ingredients.

It was a tasting menu.

We started with a mackerel with cacao mousse and toasted seaweed amuse.

Tuna with a soft cooked egg in broth (mostly eaten before the photo). The custom made bowl has a spout to drink the remaining broth from the lip.

Sea bass sashimi with chive (2 rolls already gone)

Clam, tuna (already eaten), sea bream with turnip, burdock, fried mackerel

barbecued eel with burdock that I forgot to photograph before I ate it but it was in a handmade dish

Grilled seabass with Jerusalem artichoke, sweet potato in mushroom soup

Chocolate, macaroon, pear, honey in a candy tube, lemon sorbet

the dessert smashed up

chocolate filled with coffee bean, madeleine, chestnut panna cotta

The chef gave us a copy of the menu which he signed.